Dear Prince Blueblood,
With the Princesses out on royal duties, I suppose my report on the first My Little Game Jam will have to be submitted to you. Please forward it upon their return.
As you may be aware, writing UI and graphics code is not something I particularly enjoy. I find the job tedious, requiring a significant investment in time for what feels like a small payoff. I would much rather be designing and writing code which solves a problem, not telling the system how it should react to keypresses. Despite (or perhaps because) of this, I've felt the field of game design harbors a certian mystique.
It was with some amount of trepidation that I entered the competion. Not for fear of being unable to write something, but for fear that what I created would be terrible. My muse often heads out to lunch when starting creative endeavours, leaving me high-and-dry with nary an idea to build upon. Combined with my predisposition to write problem-solving code instead of user-interface code, I was reasonbly certian my game would have neither spark of life nor flash of style.
Quite to my surprise, things went much better than I could have hoped. Within minutes of learning the theme was "chaos", several ideas had already popped into my head; one or two even seemed feasible given the 48 hour deadline. Shortly thereafter I began considering the language to use and somehow settled upon a language with which I had only passing familiarity: Javascript. Idea and language in hand, I set myself to the task of banging out an implementation.
When the deadline arrived two days later, I submitted my work for the world to see. In the span of a weekend, I had created not some sterile piece of code, but an honest-to-goodness game. While not particularly noteworthy compared to the entries, it had far surpassed my own expectations. It was a delight to have coded, and is---despite its rough edges---one of my prouder achievements.
When you return from your royal duties, I highly recommend playing some of the entries yourselves. Your subjects have crafted some astounding pieces of work that I'm certian you would enjoy.
Your Glad Subject,
JigPu